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Fleeing(for Friday Fictioneers)

Alex had been having the time of his life in Turkey, where he’d moved to be where East meets West. He loved the day trips to Greece he needed to take due to his visa situation. Then his girlfriend Suat wrote a blog post criticizing the government’s policy towards the Kurds and recognizing the Armenian Genocide. This resulted in death threats from Turkish ultra-nationalists and an arrest warrant for “insulting Turkishness”. Thus Alex and Suat decided to leave Turkey. Now they are passing through a small town in Greece on their way to Athens to apply for asylum.

6 thoughts on “Fleeing(for Friday Fictioneers)”

I have to agree with other commenters that this one is hard to pull off in a FF setting. I found myself distracted by questions like why he had to have day trips to Greece and to details of the offences, which made me care less for him as a human. Your story is a valuable warning about politics. I feel it would be an even stronger one if I felt strongly about the protagonist, and could feel his fear or defiance or frustration (your choice) at the need to move on.

The day trips to Greece were due to the fact that one can only stay in Turkey 90 days at a time; but with a day trip to another country, and another stamp, the 90 days reset. Turkey has a law against “insulting Turkishness”, which has been used to prosecute recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and the government there cracks down on dissent. That’s why they needed to flee.